Spring 1993 – Beginnings and Endings…
[Author note: It will probably help if you read AMST-1/Intro and AMST-2 before reading this one for background and context.]
We are blessed with a daughter in March and ~60 days later, I am “winged” as a Naval Aviator on May 21, 1993. I’m not number 1 in my class, but I do manage to get my first choice in selection: Cobras, East Coast. We’re heading to California for temporary duty at HMT-303, the training quadron for “skid” helicopters, Hueys (UH-1Ns) and Cobras (AH-1Ws), and then we’ll go back to New River, North Carolina, to join one of the two east coast Light Attack helo squadrons.
Although there have been a number of mishaps in the Fleet while I’m in flight school, I have no contact with any of them and they don’t even come close to penetrating my bubble. I don’t hear about them unless they’re newsworthy or someone close to me knows something about them. Mishaps are now something that happen to “other” (obviously) less worthy or less careful people; they’re akin to UFO abductions or deaths on Mt. Everest.
The two exceptions to this are the July 7, 1992, crash of a V-22 Osprey into the Potomac during a demo for congressional staffers. It gets a lot of talk because it is supposed to be the replacement aircraft for the Marine Corps’ aged CH-46 transport helicopter. I have paid enough attention to both AV-8B Harrier crashes and the V-22 to heed Jeff’s wisdom: Never select for a brand new airframe or you’ll be the one working out the bugs, whether you want to be or not.
The second is that a friend out on his FAM-6 during the approach turn stall demonstration – something the instructors don’t like either – has “a moment” where the aircraft simply does not recover and they plummet from 8000’ over the Gulf to below the hard deck at ~3000’ (IIRC) and it leaves our boy Mark shaken when we’re all out for beers on a Friday night at a local bar. They “scooped it out” but both he and his instructor spend the night in close confidence and we tease him about a budding romance. He does not laugh. They should have bailed at the hard deck and didn’t. That sin is what killed the instructor pilot who had the midair I wrote about in AMST-2.
Summer 1993 – … And New Beginnings.
I check in, complete ground school and simulators in June, and am flying the AH-1W shortly thereafter. Just after the July 4th holiday, I go on a detachment to Yuma, Arizona, where there are plenty of ranges for live-fire of ordnance. Once again: there are “boat spaces” in the Fleet to be filled and our bodies are supposed to be filling them. A brief explanation is in order: prior to the Gulf War (I) in 1990, the U.S. military “bulked up” in anticipation of massive losses that never happened. Consequently, in the following years, DoD has to shed “excess manpower” – i.e. fire a shitton of people they previously convinced to stay on – and we are the next generation coming up in the aftermath of this personnel glut-then-reduction.
On August 16, 1993, a Huey and Cobra from HMLA-367, one of the west coast active-duty squadrons, are flying over the Pacific near Catalina Island for some kind of Public Affairs photo shoot. The photographer is in the Huey, along with pilot, co-pilot, and crew-chief, taking pictures of one of the squadron’s Cobras. It is yet another pristine, clear day for flying in southern California.
I hear there has been a midair collision while I’m in the Ready Room waiting for my next flight. Our instructors include guys who have served with HML/A-367, which is just a short walk down the flightline from -303, as are all four of the west coast active squadrons and 1 reserve squadron. We share adjoining hangar spaces. Both aircraft have gone into the Pacific Ocean and rescue helicopters are searching for survivors. The mood in our squadron is somber. We attend the Memorial service at the base chapel, but I’m an interloper. I don’t know these folks and can’t commiserate in their loss.
Less than two weeks later, I’m playing in a roller hockey tournament in the parking lot at “the Murph” – what was San Diego stadium. During a break between games, I see a friend, Scotty, one of Jeff’s TBS classmates and a fellow aviator and Cobra pilot. We’ve played roller hockey together a few times over at the 22 Area tennis courts and I remember that he’s in -367, so I offer my condolences. He gets a little misty-eyed and then relates that he was in the front seat of the Cobra that was in the midair. He describes the whole mishap to me while I stare slack-jawed: how the blades hit each other, the autorotation into the water, the helo flipping upside down and sinking, the pilot in back getting his door open, Scotty holding his breath, trapped in the front seat because the Cobra’s Canopy Removal System (CRS) failed,1 the aircraft going down, down, in the darkness of the frigid Pacific, finally getting turned sideways in the seat and kicking open his door, and then thinking he can’t possibly hold his breath long enough to get to the top…
Suddenly, this isn’t a mishap that happened to just some guy out there; this isn’t the helo dunker at Pensacola. This guy’s been at my house, met my wife and kids, drank beer and barbecued with me, played on a line with me in roller hockey. This isn’t alien abduction stories on NPR – this is Scotty and I can see he’s different. I can’t say precisely how, but it’s similar to the difference you notice after someone loses a parent or close relative; or how you feel in the weeks after you put down a longtime, beloved pet. He isn’t the same happy-go-lucky guy I knew just 6 months ago back at flight school. I hope it’s temporary, but it doesn’t feel that way.
There’s another aspect of this, too, a poison embedded in his own gratefulness at being alive, and I can’t help but poke at it: he is a relative newcomer to the squadron, as I am at -303, and yet he lives… while one of the “old hands” there is now dead. A single Cobra rotor blade is 32” wide, it weighs 385 lb, and at the leading edge is traveling near the speed of sound.2 By contrast, the Huey blade has a chord of something more like 22” and nowhere near the mass of the Cobra blade. He and I both know the Huey blades were destroyed by the Cobra’s. Fortunately, 4 crewmembers were rescued; the pilot and the photographer were not. I ask him how he’s handling that part and he just stares and shakes his head.
“I don’t know, man…” He trails off, but the hockey tournament intervenes. I’ve got to get back to playing, so we bro-hug and I thank him for coming down to watch our team play.
From Bad to Worse – The Curse of 29 Palms and Disintegrating Blades
I’m back to flying and making my way through the syllabus the first week of September when it all comes to an abrupt halt.
Sept. 7, 1993
Three Marines and one Army officer are killed when two Cobras from HML/A-269 smack into each other on a night flight at 29 Palms. That is my future squadron – I already have orders in the system for 269 when I finish and they are now down 3 experienced pilots. They’re at 29 Palms for a Combined Arms Exercise (CAX). Affectionately known as 29 Stumps because of the rather humble looking palms that line the road onto the base, it’s one of the few places in the Marine Corps where live fire exercises can be done with basically everything in the Marine Corps arsenal: tanks, artillery, bombs, rockets, Hellfire missiles – you can fire everything short of a nuke at the Stumps.
I hear about it the next day at 303 when I come in to fly. There are not a lot of details, but word travels fast in a community of perhaps 400 people. There are 6 active-duty and 2 Reserve HML/A squadrons with perhaps 30 aircraft each, a mix of predominantly Cobras and a smaller number of Hueys. It is a very small community of people who actually fill the seats of our aircraft.
Sept. 8, 1993
I’m hanging around the Ready Room later that afternoon when the phone starts ringing at the Squadron Duty Officer’s desk. The SDO sits by a radio in the Ready Room and tracks the flight schedule, checks aircraft “in and out” as they depart and return, answers the phone, and otherwise assists with making the flight schedule run. We all have to do that duty on a rotating basis.
A pilot from the West Coast Reserve squadron (HML/A-775) is shooting instrument approaches with a flight surgeon in the front seat at Montgomery Field, a civilian airport just south of NAS (now MCAS) Miramar, a 30 minute drive away from us in San Diego County. It doesn’t take us long to hear that, according to eyewitnesses, the aircraft has come apart in flight.
If there is a nightmare scenario for me, this is it. Literally. Like most people (I think), I’ve had nightmares about falling. In mine, a recurring one from childhood, I’m climbing a ladder against a castle wall and I am impossibly high, over a hundred feet in the air. The castle sits at the peak of a hill and so the ground slopes away from it. I am at the top of the ladder when it gets pushed away and the fall is even farther because of the slope. I can feel the ladder accelerating as I plummet, and I have nothing to do but hold on and ride it down. An instant before impact I wake up and sit bolt upright.
The Law of Unintended Consequences Remains Undefeated
On Sept. 16, 1993, NavAir Systems Command grounds all of the Cobras; we learn why in a briefing. At the very tip of each Whiskey Cobra main rotor blade is a tiny opening the size of your fingernail called a “weep-hole.” The purpose of the weep-hole is to allow any moisture that gets inside the blade to leak out. This bit of seemingly critical information has not been transmitted to mechanics and pilots in the Fleet. When the Cobras first start getting delivered, what the mechs and pilots notice is that the weep-hole makes a ghostly, whistling hum once the blades start spinning. In response, the mechanics caulk the weep-holes on the blades to shut the damn things up. Over time, moisture that gets in, stays in and eventually corrodes the blades from the inside out.
Every single blade in the Fleet has to be borescoped in order to ensure that the blades do not have any cracking or degradation as a result of moisture trapped inside. HMT-303 is second on the priority list – after deployed squadrons. A good friend who we lived next door to in base housing in flight school wanted Cobras, but instead got Hueys. He makes a crack to me in the Ready Room: “Looks like gettin’ Hueys might just be better’n I thought. Maybe God loves me more’n you,” he quips in his Texas twang.
He is a very close friend and can make that kind of joke; gallows humor is a part of flying. Less than a week later God proves that she hates all of us equally. On Sept. 21, 1993, a Huey crashes at 29 Palms during a close-in fire support exercise, killing 4.
Eventually, within a month, all of our Cobra blades are scoped and we return to flying. I finish the syllabus around Thanksgiving. By the first week of December, the wife and I pile into our crappy, but reliable, Chevy Corsica filled with all of our belongings, the kids, and pulling a small U-Haul to head back east. I am now, finally, finished being a “student.” I am a Cobra pilot – a 7565. At least, that’s what I think as we leave southern California for North Carolina.
1 The Cobra CRS is a piece of Det Cord – a thin explosive that looks like silver speaker wire – that runs around the seam of the canopy “glass.” You twist and pull a handle and it is supposed to “blow out” the canopy leaving an easy egress from the rather confined cockpit area of the Cobra. It has a known 99% failure rate. So well-known that NavAir authorizes the installation of canopy breakout knives in the cockpit that we are supposed to use to “draw an X” on the glass and then punch out the canopy. It is an absurdity that we all live with as just “part of the deal.”
2 This is the limitation of rotary-wing flight: unlike fixed-wing aircraft, a helicopter blade-tip cannot have a sonic boom because of what that does to the air – and what that would mean for the next blade coming forward and trying to generate lift into the pressure wave from the prior blade breaking the sound barrier. This is a problem fixed-wing aircraft (planes) do not have; their wings are in front of the sonic boom. This might be fine for the first blade in a helo, but would not end well for the second.
Amazing story Ozy
Thanks, kinnath.
I have to take the dog for a walk, but I’ll be back in about 15.
You kids and your euphemisms!
LOL
Real interesting stuff, thanks for sharing.
Kind of reads like a serialized book. Maybe a second book in there? Maybe when you run for office!
Maybe when you run for office!
Yuck, having survived this shit you would wish that on him?
True. I was thinking more book sales – needs a hook to expand its reach. But yeah, that would be an awful steep price to pay for some extra book sales…
GAH! No.
I feel about government the same way most of you probably feel about ghosts.
(Do with that what you will… but not you, SF.)
” I have no contact with any of [the mishaps] and they don’t even come close to penetrating my bubble.” Damn. That’s a CO you can trust. Earned. (Or…) [Edit: Fuck. I wrote this first. I hope this doesn’t bite me. So sorry if it does. Getting swept up reading.
Nah – it’s more like, I’m doing so much shit between studying, flying, and with what spare time I have trying to be a dad to my wife and kids, other mishaps are things that happen… “out there, somewhere else to someone else.”
I love this series, Ozzy.
Thank you so very much.
Well, keep in mind, I’m also the guy with the anthrax series, so….
Great stuff, Ozy. Sounds like being a Marine helo pilot is probably like always being in a low-intensity(?) conflict, I always thought the Marines wore dress blue uniforms, although I see some pictures with white pants. Could you give us (or steer us to) a quick review of the history/protocol?
Clicked too soon:
a low-intensity(?) conflict, what with the periodic casualties amongst people in your service who are maybe one or two steps removed from you.
Ya know, RC, I never thought of it like that, but that’s really not an inaccurate description or analogy.
Keep that in mind as this series goes along and let’s re-visit it when we’re a half-dozen of these in and then again later.
So, we do wear dress blues – and we also went to blue-whites at one point – which was the blue top with the white trousers, like the Silent Drill Team does. It’s pretty snazzy.
But way back in the day when Al Gray was still Commandant, the joke was that he only kept choker whites around because they made him look less fat.
Yes, Marines had Choker Whites (like the Navy’s, except cooler), but then we got rid of them.
The two options for Dress Uniforms became Dress Blues (with the blue pants with the blood stripe down the leg) OR the Blue-whites, for super special occasions when it’s “authorized.”
I’m glued to this series. Thanks for writing.
A nice coincidence, as we sit here my sister, her husband, and their son (the pilot) are on vacation in San Diego. My son-in-law is on the Nimitz in the area. My sister said they saw the ship off the coast, and a lot of helicopters flying out. I wish they were coming into port, it would be cool for her to send a picture to my kid.
I was unaware that chopper blade tips should normally never exceed Mach One and why. Reminds me of the chopper/plane accident that killed John Heinz
Alas, even Uncle Sam’s Misguided Children are not immune to cultural rot:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r4q1GpeeuY
Speaking of cultural rot:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOFkVZQ8etE
I’ve been getting bombarded by YouTube ads about living with schizophrenia and joining the military. Also today I passed the reverse Turing test twice at my online AI job.
Twice? Sounds like you’re trying too hard, AI Derpy. You’re not fooling anyone.
Well, I do have a strange urge to shuffle around and make beep-beep-boop noises.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4msIjHlEeSk
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/ambigamy/202307/the-risk-with-ai-is-machine-simulated-stupidity
South Park comes through again.
Damn. That’s a harsh tease. I am unaccustomed to such a work culture. (Even off-the-clock, rumor/joke-mill, etc.) I’m quite glad. Reminds me of Dad saying universal military/nat’l service training/etc should be mandatory. Not for the work, but for the bringing of different folk together. Also reminds me of the truth of how expendable men are considered.
Fun Korean conversation/writing topic: Mandatory service for boys is absolute. Two years within ages ~18-26, IIRC. Girls, none at all. Ask ’em if it’s a good idea: Boys’ll scream it isn’t and the laughing girls love it. Hilarity often ensues. Just make sure it’s in English and that’s a class, right there.
Opie and I were close and would only grow closer over the years. As I mention him in this series later on, it’s no spoiler alert to note that we were roommates on deployment together and lived just down the street from each other in base housing. A dear friend.
I get the theory here, but I find it hard to believe that works any better than the detonation cord.
Bonus:
Pilot trapped in F-22 cockpit after canopy failure
*narrator’s voice* It doesn’t work.
In some of my earliest flights out in Yuma, I flew with a guy who was absolutely obsessed with “post-crash fires” and not burning to death trapped inside the helicopter. I had never even considered it, but this guy had very detailed information about it – and wore a fire retardant shirt under his flight suit that came up his neck. I thought he was kinda loony, but then…
Men, XY, being men. Understanding the expendable nature and, pretty much (and hopefully), moving on. To the next game or the next day. Moving on frequently doesn’t work out that way. I detest the near(?) malignant view of men in Western culture. Uh. It’s tough for all of us. So’s the female game. Life ain’t easy. News at 11.
I respect Priests, good psychs or other folk who have that commiseration ability and spirit to aid when they can. (I am not one of those folk.)
This is outstanding. Thanks for the inside looks, and as is likely known, I am a complete pussy when compared to you. I lobby for you to be selected far before me in Teams. (I’ll handle concessions!)
Bro – you drove a fucking scooter in Thailand. That’s way above my risk tolerance.
Great piece Ozzy. Ever in NKY let me know we will grab a beer or two
Right on, OBE!
thoughts on the video circulating about the Blackhawk that hovered rotor washed the private supply camp in NC? I asked my former Army buddy who flew Blackhawks in Iraq but he hasn’t gotten back to me.
I only watched it quickly, so I can’t tell if the pilots were somehow thinking they were supposed to land or had some other ideas about what they were doing there, and thus tried to land and then waved off? I don’t know. I don’t know what to believe any more with the decontextualized videos that circulate everywhere.
Right on. I agree not enough to go on. NG is claiming they were looking for a spot to land so maybe that is what it is. Just seems lack of communication and that always favors “let the government do it” narrative.
This is good stuff. Thanks Ozy
I’m absolutely eating this up.
My dad was an engineer at the Naval Air Warfare Center during this timeframe, and it was around 1993 or shortly thereafter (I was 4 or 5) that I got to visit during an open house and was fascinated by the TOW targeting system they were demoing.
I wanted to be a navy pilot so badly as a little kid, but it wasn’t to be.
Thank you for this series Ozy!
I was 4 or 5
*starts waving cane at all the damn youngsters*
I am impartial to the Apache but damn is the Viper a hell of a killing machine.
The TOW was not the “best” thing to fire, but it was pretty fun and a challenge.
Because it’s wire-guided, you’ve got an interesting “relationship” with the missile while it’s still on the wire (vice the Hellfire or rockets).
You’ve got to stay uncovered and also ensure wire clearance, but it does give you the ability to react to the target while the missile’s in flight.
Given your profession, I can see why an aircraft coming apart in midair would be your worst nightmare. Mine was trapped in a fire.
Thanks for this series, really interesting.
I may have mentioned this before, but in 2004 my unit was doing convoy security in Iraq.
On the missions we got Cobra support we were never attacked.
I remember once we were stopped for something and I looked up at the Cobra flying figure 8’s over us and saying “I wish those bastards would hit us now”.
Still love the Cobras.
I ran into a Vietnam vet one time and he asked what I had done and when I told him I’d flown Cobras, he got a big smile: “We loved them Cobras.”
I just chuckled – yeah, we like what we do, too. Playing Valkyrie and raining holy hell on folks picking on our guys on the ground kinda gets our rocks off.
I am enjoying this series Ozy, mahalo.
I never had a Cobra for top cover in Iraq, but always loved to see the Apaches providing top cover.
As part of the “littoral” transformation of the USMC they got rid of all of the Cobras out here. I miss seeing them. Once we had one come down and check out our boat halfway between Oahu and Molokai.
Buddy was at Dong Ap Bia and said one of the movie inaccuracies was that it was a Cobra not a Huey.
The Bro Firsting against Milton.
Needz moar banana hammock.
It wasn’t quite that bad but I heard stories of the ejectable cockpit of the FB-111.
Step 1 explosive guillotine knives cut the control cables
Step 2 the cockpit ejected… most of the time
I was told that the suggested remedy was to fire their parachute hoping that would pull them free.
The Why Files got me going down the rabbit hole looking up Bill Cooper. I had never heard of him, but he pretty much predicted 9/11 and the response that would come after.
Pretty impressive for a guy they want you to view as just some crackpot.
Thanks Ozy! Only been self loading cargo in the back so these are quite interesting. AH1 was one of the first models I did as a little boy so always had a fondness for them.
July 7, 1992, crash of a V-22 Osprey into the Potomac during a demo for congressional staffers
Damn the crashes! Full speed ahead!
Why couldn’t it crash into the congressmen?
It was defective?
Morning, Glibs.
Happy hump day, you people.
🍁🍳😁
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=S4GojQTu7iI
🎶🎶
That song has not aged well.
*waves at UCS*
https://nypost.com/2024/10/08/us-news/diddy-used-lubricant-mixed-with-ghb-to-rape-victim-lawyer-claims/
Wut? Is that actually a thing?
How does it make you feel to know you’re not very kinky?
Just another celebrity freak who was operating in plain sight for decades…Katt Williams was spilling the beans on this kind of stuff years and years ago.
I remember back in like 1998, some MTV VJ was interviewing Courtney Love, and asked her if she had any advice for her young female fans about the music industry. Without missing a beat, she said, “If Harvey Weinstein ever invites you to a private meeting, don’t go.”
such’ fam
what’s goody
TALL ERIE CAND!
Good morning, homey, Ted’S., Sean, rhy, U, and Roat!
Morning, how goes?
Mornin’.
So far, so good. Busy at work yesterday making changes in the payroll and timekeeping systems to reflect several “reorganization” promotions. Didn’t have the proper access to change an employee from Hourly to Salaried Supervisor in the timekeeping system, so my boss requested I be given access. Afterward, I discovered at day’s end that the layout of my own timesheet had changed, and I no longer had the button that clocks me in and out. 🤦♀️
Wait, you actually have a timeclock rather than just reporting your hours?
Bummer. I last had one of those… at a college job. Even at the Xerox helpdesk I just reported my time.
Have you been salaried since then? I believe many/most IT positions are able to be classified as exempt from DOL overtime rules.
How’s it going with you, rhy?
Nope. At Xerox I was hourly. Got double time when I covered the 4th of July.
My first state job I was overtime eligable. I got screwed out of a 12.5 hour overtime shift when they backdated my promotion to before that date and I became overtime exempt – which is not salaried, because I can still get docked if I don’t come up to hours, I just don’t get credit for time over hours. I have never been truely salaried (hours do not matter).
Fair to middlin’. 🥴
Biden’s “sweet old senile grandpa Joe” image takes a bit of a hit in Bob Woodward’s new book.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13940627/president-biden-netanyahu-bad-guy-accused-regularly-lying.html
‘Member when Nixon swearing on tape was scandalous?
Wait, did anyone ever actually think of him as anything but an evil old fool? (Perhaps an evil young fool in decades past)
I would expect nothing less than Bibi having a few choice words to describe Joe, too.
Curious to see how MSDNC spins that…but not curious enough to actually watch that channel.
When I see Woodward as a byline I automatically assume that whatever follows is there because the CIA wants it there.
Notice there was not a peep of this stuff before the debate and the decision to jettison Biden
Yeah, the events surrounding all of that stink to high heaven – imagine if the parties were reversed and the media were interested in doing its fucking job.
I write fiction, and I have trouble stretching suspension of disbelief that far.
Why do cyclists have a death wish?
This morning, I nearly splatted one who decided that in the pre-dawn hours, it was okay to ride into oncoming traffic with neither lights nor reflectors. The swerve to not splat him nearly ran me into another car (which I managed to avoid).
That sounds like one of the “lost my license due to DWI” sort of cyclists
A combination of the natural entitlement of the rich suburban yuppie, and the inability to understand basic physics; i.e. 200-pound vehicles that top out at 20mph should not be ‘sharing the road’ with 4000-pound vehicles that top out at 85mpg.